There will be no love for dating apps until they change their toxic cultures | Nichi Hodgson

Workplace allegations against Badoo reflect an industry that all too often treats both its staff and users unfairly at best

Allegations that dating app Badoo has a toxic, misogynistic work culture will not shock many in the dating app industry. Regardless of the truth about the particular claims – and Badoo’s holding company MagicLab has called the Forbes report “reckless” – too many similarly sized dating apps share a toxic working culture where the safety, dignity and respect due to both dating app employees and their users comes at the cost of a million gamed profiles – and the profits they rake in for a select group of privileged white male executives.

In many ways there is a culture war between some of the male CEOs and the engineers who have confected apps in line with their Weird Science fantasies, and everyone else who works there who are genuinely driven by a impulse to help people find love. Over the years, I have heard too many tales of female employees subjected to gross levels of sexism (hired for their looks, forced to create their own “honeytrap” profiles on the apps to be used to hook despondent customers, not to menton those harassed and assaulted). Racism is also rife. I’ve heard stories of black and Asian employees commandeered to be the diverse “faces” of the business while they try to assuage the concerns of BAME users experiencing racism, whether in the form of a complete lack of matches or direct abuse. At the same time, LGBT+ employees are grilled on the details of their sex and dating lives by hetero-normative execs.